The Economy — a Study in Failure

Abstract

For the British economy, the sixties were years of bitter disappointment. The real failure of Governments lay not so much in their economic policies as in their extravagant claims of omnicompetence. A credulous public was led to expect El Dorado, found only plenty, and became understandably dissatisfied. Some of the economic problems were found to be intractable. Others could be disposed of, like the heads of the hydra, only at the cost of creating more numerous and more horrifying new ones. Each of the problems became more serious as the decade wore on. The traditional instruments to deal with them seemed less and less effective. The battery of new devices rarely improved upon the old.